A world-renowned transplant surgeon, Thomas Starzl (born 1926) performed the first human liver transplant in 1963 and was also a pioneer in kidney transplantation. Starzl's research in chimerism, the coexistence of donor and recipient cells, led to significant contributions in the understanding of transplant immunology, including how and why organs are accepted. He also helped to develop better drugs to make human organ transplants safer and more successful.

Thomas Earl Starzl was born into a prominent Le Mars, Iowa, family of German extraction on March 11, 1926. His father, Roman F. Starzl, was editor and publisher of the Globe Post and, as R.F. Starzl, was one of the early twentieth-century science fiction writers. His father was also a frustrated inventor. His mother, Anna Loretta (Laura) Fitzgerald Starzl, was the center of family life and when she died of breast cancer just before Starzl graduated from college the family disintegrated. Starzl had...